Patti Smith reflects on human passage, Mapplethorpe

The Cincinnati exhibit 'Coral Sea' is a tribute to her youthful partner and muse.

Artist and rocker Smith put together her Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center exhibition, “Patti Smith: The Coral Sea,” in large part as an homage to her muse and former partner, Robert Mapplethorpe. This is the first time in America that she’s centered an entire show around Mapplethorpe, she said.(Photo: Gannett/The Cincinnati Enquirer)

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CINCINNATI -- In Just Kids, Patti Smith's poetically written memoir of her relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe, the artist and rock icon calls the photographer "the artist of my life."

"We met when we were 20; we informed each others' work; we developed a mutual confidence," she said via phone from Mexico City. "Robert was a born artist. I was a young person who always wanted to be an artist or a writer but didn't have the immediate ability that he did. His confidence in me really changed my life. It made me go from that state of tortured young student to feeling that I had an identity, that I too had a calling.

"This thing that we shared as young people has helped sustain me throughout my whole life," she added. "It was important when I was young, but it's really important to me now. It's important when I put together my exhibitions."

Smith put together her Contemporary Arts Center exhibition, Patti Smith: The Coral Sea, opening this weekend and running through November, in large part as an homage to her muse. This is the first time in America that she's centered an entire exhibition around Mapplethorpe, she said.

Part of her decision to do so here hinged on Cincinnati's and the CAC's connection to Mapplethorpe, she said. For its 1990 exhibit Robert Mapplethorpe: The Perfect Moment, the CAC and then-director Dennis Barrie faced obscenity charges. They were later acquitted, but the legal battle put Cincinnati in the national spotlight as part of debates about censorship and obscenity.

Smith stressed that although Mapplethorpe was the muse, the exhibition goes beyond the two of them to address themes universal to the human experience.

"Even though it's symbolically focused on Robert, (the exhibition) can be looked at completely independently from Robert as well," Smith said. "(Its components) center around Robert, his illness, his passing and his legacy, but also on human passage ... life, illness, death and further journey.

"We all experience these things: Almost all of us experience illness; we experience loss; we maintain the memory of our loved ones; and we look toward the future," she added. "We also will go through this entire passage. It's not a dark exhibition; it's not a depressing exhibition; it's not even meant to be sad. It's just examining these stages of human evolution, perhaps in a poetic way."

Reflective of Smith's work in multiple disciplines, which she does, as she puts it, "with the same amount of attention and … hopes to do something transformative."

The exhibition blends poetry (manuscript pages of The Coral Sea, written in direct memory of Mapplethorpe in her own handwriting), photography (including a shot of Mapplethorpe's hands that Smith took when he was 22 and her more recent images of Japanese writer Ryunosuke Akutagawa's burial site) and installation (including a small room she describes as "part tent and part chapel," a place for contemplation) with some of Mapplethorpe's personal effects, such as his slippers.

"It will be diverse; it's a formal exhibit, but it's not so minimalist and austere that one is left empty," she said.

"I hope that viewers take away not necessarily thinking about Robert or myself but things that are important to them," Smith said. "The process of putting together one's work belongs to the artist, but once you've put it in the public eye, it's really for the people. I hope they leave at least feeling it was a worthy experience.

"I'm fairly old fashioned," she added. "I don't expect for my exhibitions to be groundbreaking or to push any real envelopes or to stir controversy, although sometimes that happens by accident.

"I really am happy if I do an exhibition and people find beauty in it. Because we have so many challenges in the world and we are challenged by many of our artists ... challenging people is not really my goal in these exhibitions. I want to present them with an atmosphere that gives them substance to think about their own lives, their own thoughts, their own spirituality, their own loved ones."

Speaking of loved ones, Smith said she thinks Mapplethorpe would be pleased with the CAC exhibition.

"In putting this exhibit together, I really try to aesthetically please him," she said. "It has a formality in it that I think would please him, but it's still very much me. It has sort of the poetic aspect to it.

"Still when I do my work, when I commit art, he's always with me," Smith said of Mapplethorpe. "No one has replaced him; no one will ever replace him. We have people in our life that are irreplaceable ... they are to us something that no one else could be or they so fulfill that place that you don't need another.

"I don't need another artist of my life. I have Robert. The belief that we had in each other is a belief that goes on after death. I've always felt it, and I feel it every day."